Few people, including Stanley McChrystal himself, appear to be held accountable for a Rolling Stone magazine interview that scuttled McChrystal's career, The New York Times is reporting.

I know none of the actors in this case. I've never met either Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone writer, or McChrystal, But I've had my doubts about how this whole thing happened. One piece of evidence that Rolling Stone didn't know what it had was how it was played in the actual magazine. It blew up on-line but you could barely find the story in the newsstand version.

I met former CNN Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre at a conference last week and he has a different take on events. He's now a blogger on military issues and his thoughts on "off the record" and McChrystal are here.